Paradossi alpini, vecchi e nuovi: ripensare il rapporto tra demografia e mutamento culturale

Alpine paradoxes, old and new: rethinking the relationship between demography and cultural change. -- In the last two decades of the twentieth century the canonical image of Alpine society was challenged by the unexpected results of a spate of historical, geographical and anthropological studies. Starting from a largely numerical exercise such as the long-term reconstruction of Alpine demography, these studies brought to light a number of paradoxes – socio-cultural as well as demographic – which forced a rethinking of the relationships between mountains and plains in the past. However, new and different paradoxes have surfaced in the past few years, and once again they are signalled by demographic changes partly following unexpected trajectories. In particular, after more than a century of unbroken population decline there are signs of a trend reversal in the French and now also in the Italian Alps. Since growth is primarily due to net migration, it is apparent that the population of many Alpine municipalities is not only increasing but also undergoing significant compositional changes. Immigration is an especially delicate issue in the Alps as it raises questions about who should be entitled to learn, transmit and valorise local cultural heritage. We must wonder whether a demographic change such as the trend reversal we are witnessing today in the Alps translates into cultural change. Or, in other terms, whether such a reversal necessarily entails cultural discontinuity. It is when tackling questions of this kind that one encounters new paradoxes. For it seems reasonable to believe that in many cases cultural continuity is made possible only by demographic discontinuity (new inhabitants), while wide sectors of the ‘local’ population (the representatives of genealogical continuity) may look for innovation and creativity (discontinuity) instead of making efforts to perpetuate tradition. An issue to be explored is whether demographic history differentially affects the ability of the ‘new Alpiners’ to take the lead in the cultural domain: it can be surmised that the areas that have suffered more severe depopulation offer greater scope for both cultural creativity and cultural entrepreneurship than those that have been relatively spared by demographic decline.